Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas

Epilogue

Epilogue | 217 | Epilogue Austin survived two state-wide elections to finally gain official recognition as the permanent seat of government of Texas. The constitutionally mandated election of 1850, in which voters were to pick a capital for the next twenty years, resulted in an easy victory for the city. The pace of work involved in reorganizing the state after the Civil War delayed the 1870 vote by two years, but in 1872 Austin again won handily against its closest competitors, Houston and Waco. Thus, while the government of the Republic of Texas assembled at seven different locations in nine years, the state of Texas has had only one seat of government in its 161-year history. Little of the Republic of Texas remains in Austin. Of the buildings mentioned in this book, only the French Legation survives. Dr. Joseph Robertson, one of the city’s earliest residents, purchased the property from Mosely Baker in 1848. Ten years later his twelve-year-old daughter Julia painted a landscape of the house and grounds still on view inside the structure. In 1948 Dr. Robertson’s descendents sold the complex to the state of Texas. It overlooks modern downtown Austin as a museum administered by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Mirabeau Lamar’s presidential mansion fell into such disrepair that the next president, Sam Houston, refused occupancy. Fire destroyed the building in 1847. A school for girls, St. Mary’s Academy, built an impressive limestone structure on the site in 1885, which soon gained a reputation as an Austin landmark. Alas, when the school moved in 1947 the building was razed. Subsequent owners lowered the hill by several feet and built a large hotel and shopping complex covering the entire block. Nor did “Lamar’s folly” long survive the republic. The state erected a stone building in 1853 on the site chosen by Edwin Waller for the permanent capitol. Benjamin Noble’s original wood edifice was torn down in 1857. The Texas government donated the land at Hickory (Eighth) and Colorado Streets to the city with the stipulation that it must use it for a city hall and market house. The resulting municipal building was torn down and rebuilt in 1905, then extensively remodeled in the 1930s. This building still stands, although municipal government has moved on. The 1853 capitol was lost to an 1881 fire. The state hastily constructed a tem- Seat of Empire | 218 | porary capitol on the southwest corner of Congress and Eleventh Street. This building housed the first classes of the University of Texas in 1883 before burning in 1899. The present pink limestone Texas capitol opened in 1888. Richard and Mary Bullock’s hotel lasted until 1875. Change in ownership prompted a name change to Swisher’s in 1852 and Smith’s in 1858. The hotel’s demolition made way for an elaborate store building that was completed in 1876 on what came to be known as Cook’s Corner. Long before then Abner Cook had graduated from constructing outhouses and one-room churches to become Austin’s most prominent master builder. Although the buildings at Cook’s Corner have disappeared, many other Cook creations, such as the governor’s mansion and Woodlawn have not. Austin’s waterways yet flow but bear little resemblance to their ancestors . Colorado River floodwaters intermittently inundated the city throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first dam across the river failed with catastrophic results only five years after its completion in 1895. Its replacement did not prevent occasional disasters, the most recent of which occurred in 1935. Subsequent construction of a series of dams upriver created the “Chain of Lakes.” This, plus an improved dam within the city, finally tamed the river. A dam downriver created Town Lake, recently renamed Lady Bird Lake in honor of Lady Bird Johnson. Canoes and kayaks now glide past cyclists, walkers, and runners on the trails following the shoreline. No one swims in Shoal Creek any more. Dry for much of the year, the stream when flowing is usually filled with trash and debris. An ancient Indian trail leading from the creek mouth northward is now a hike-andbike trail. Exercisers passing Gideon White’s 1840s home site just north of Thirty-Fourth Street might relax under a grove of oak trees that shaded the ill-fated settler and his family. Waller Creek has fared no better but faces a brighter future. The city recently found the necessary funding to begin...